RAYMOND PARKS
06-05-1914 - 06-20-2010
was the owner of Red Byron's car which won NASCAR's first Strictly Stock (now NASCAR Cup Series) championship in 1949. Parks was the first child of Alfred and Leila Parks and great-great-nephew of settler Benny Parks, who found gold in the state of Georgia in the early nineteenth century. Born in Dawsonville, Georgia, Raymond was the oldest of his father's sixteen children. As a youngster, he was caught buying Prohibition-era corn whiskey for his father and spent three months in jail. Parks left home at age 14 and began hauling moonshine, worked a still near Atlanta and later went into business for himself, bringing liquor from Dawsonville to Atlanta restaurants, hoping his cars could elude the police. Although Prohibition ended in 1933, parts of the South were still dry and business remained good for Parks, who eventually oversaw a fleet of cars running liquor without having paid federal taxes. But he could not outrun the authorities forever, and he served nine months of a one-year and one-day sentence in the federal penitentiary in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1936 to 1937. Parks served in World War II during the famous Battle of the Bulge in
Belgium. Prior to the founding of NASCAR, Parks was the car owner for moonshine runners and nephews Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall as far back as 1938. Park decided to take his nephews and go racing. In the 'early' days before NASCAR created the Cup Series; the division was know as "Modified". Lloyd Seay began racing in 1938, winning in his first stock car race at Lakewood Speedway; driving a 1934 Ford owned by his cousin Raymond Parks, and tuned by Red Vogt when he was 18 years old. He flipped his car twice during the July 27, 1941 race at the Daytona Beach Road Course and finished fourth. He returned to the track later that year on August 24, 1941 against his cousin Roy Hall in Parks' cars. After starting fifteenth, he led all 50 laps in the race. He won his next race on August 31 at High Point, and left immediately for the Labor Day race at Lakewood Speedway on the following day. He arrived late at the event, missing qualifying. He had to start last, and
Lloyd Seay's race car
Red Byron - First NASCAR Cup Champion
he passed into the lead on lap 35. He battled Bob Flock all afternoon before winning the $450 first prize. It was his last race. He had won three races in 15 days. The next day Seay would be shot and killed over a disagreement over some sugar bought to make moonshine. Roy Hall along with Tim, Bob and Fonty Flock were just a few of the drivers Parks employed to wheel his race cars in the pre-NASCAR era. In December 1947, Parks was among some three dozen racing figures who gathered at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla., to create the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing under the direction of the driver and race promoter Bill France Sr. That groundwork turned a loosely organized Southern sport run
on dirt tracks into a national sports spectacle and a marketing powerhouse. Parks’s driver Red Byron, backed by the crew chief Red Vogt, captured the championship of Nascar’s first series: Previously the events for “modified” cars, models built before World War II and were extensively altered for racing. Nascar’s modern championship series got under way in 1949 when it turned to “strictly stock” autos, models built after the war that more closely resembled those that people could buy from a showroom, having been altered only modestly for speed. In 1948-49, with Red Byron as the driver Parks's cars won the first two NASCAR Championships ever awarded; the 'Modified' class in 1948, and the newly formed NASCAR Cup Series. Byron, who overcame severe leg wounds sustained while a tail gunner in World War II, won the ’49 series, driving an Oldsmobile for Parks. Whatever his rough-hewn past in illegal liquor, Parks presented a classy
Tim Flock
Curtis Turner
aura. He attended races in a woolen suit and a fedora, and he insisted that dents in his cars be repaired before they raced again. Just like his dapper appearance he had at the race track; he insisted all his race cars appear at the track as nicely as possible. The wizardry of chief mechanic Red Vogt made sure the mechanical parts were fast and dependable. Parks was one of eight drivers inducted in the first class of the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame in 2002, along with his nephew Lloyd Seay, Red Byron, Tim Flock, and Bill Elliott. He was inducted in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2009. Parks was the "Rick Hendrick" of his time. He was the first multi-car car
owner. In 1949 he owned the cars driven by Red Byron, Bob Flock, and Roy Hall. Byron and Flock finished first and third in the first NASCAR Championship points chase. He also owned the cars of successful drivers Fonty Flock, and Curtis Turner. Parks retired from racing in 1955. As recounted by Neal Thompson in “Driving With the Devil” (2006), a history of NASCAR’s roots, Parks told a friend back in the late 1940's how to make a small fortune: “You take a huge fortune, and then you go racing.” Parks was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame class of 2017; along with Rick Hendrick, Mark Martin, Benny Parsons and Richard Childress. Parks died on June 20th, 2010. He was 96 years old.
Georgia Racing Hall of Fame Induction
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